378 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
bine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms 
about the lattice ; the pot of flowers in the window ; the 
holly providentially planted about the house to cheat winter 
of its dreariness, and to throw in a semblance of green sum- 
mer to cheat the fireside ; — all these bespeak the influence 
of taste flowing down from high sources, and pervading the 
lowest levels of the public mind. If ever love, as the poets 
sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an 
English peasant.” 
It is this love of rural life and this nice feeling of the har- 
monious union of nature and art, that reflects so much credit 
upon the English as a people, and, which sooner or later we 
hope to see completely naturalized in this country. Under 
its enchanting influence, the too great bustle and excitement 
of our commercial cities will be happily counterbalanced by 
the more elegant and quiet enjoyments of country life. Our 
rural residences, evincing that love of the beautiful and the 
picturesque, which, combined with solid comfort^ is so attrac- 
tive to the eye of every beholder, will not only become 
sources of the purest enjoyment to the refined minds of the 
possessors, but will exert an influence for the improvement 
in taste of every class in our community. The ambition to 
build “ shingle palaces” in starved and meagre grounds, we 
are glad to see giving way to that more refined feeling which 
prefers a neat villa or cottage, tastily constructed, and sur- 
rounded by its proper accessories, of greater or less extent, 
of verdant trees and beautiful shrubbery. 
It is gratifying to see the progressive improvement in Ru- 
ral Architecture, which within a few years past, has evinced 
itself in various parts of the country, and particularly on the 
banks of the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers, as well as in 
the suburbs of our larger cities. Here and there, beautiful 
